Saturday, November 28, 2009

Rush Limbaugh has urged that a military coup overthrow the current government in Washington. That is a prosecutable crime called 'seditious treason' and there is probable cause to indict Rush Limbaugh and put him on trial.

Whoever knowingly or willfully advocates, abets, advises, or teaches the duty, necessity, desirability, or propriety of overthrowing or destroying the government of the United States or the government of any State, Territory, District or Possession thereof, or the government of any political subdivision therein, by force or violence, or by the assassination of any officer of any such government;or Whoever, with intent to cause the overthrow or destruction of any such government, prints, publishes, edits, issues, circulates, sells, distributes, or publicly displays any written or printed matter advocating, advising, or teaching the duty, necessity, desirability, or propriety of overthrowing or destroying any government in the United States by force or violence, or attempts to do so; or Whoever organizes or helps or attempts to organize any society, group, or assembly of persons who teach, advocate, or encourage the overthrow or destruction of any such government by force or violence; or becomes or is a member of, or affiliates with, any such society, group, or assembly of persons, knowing the purposes thereof - Shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than twenty years, or both, and shall be ineligible for employment by the United States or any department or agency thereof, for the five years next following his conviction. If two or more persons conspire to commit any offense named in this section, each shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than twenty years, or both, and shall be ineligible for employment by the United States or any department or agency thereof, for the five years next following his conviction.

As used in this section, the terms "organizes" and "organize", with respect to any society, group, or assembly of persons, include the recruiting of new members, the forming of new units, and the regrouping or expansion of existing clubs, classes, and other units
of such society, group, or assembly of persons.

Sedition refers to any overt conduct deemed by the legal authority as encouraging or supporting an insurrection against the established law and order. Limbaugh has advocated military insurrection, that the United States Military Academy detain and/or other wise 'arrest' Barack Obama, the legal and fairly elected President of the United States. Limbaugh is on record supporting a military coup. Given the price of 'air time' his support is material! It is an open and shut case of sedition.
Limbaugh's remarks should be placed in context --his record of bigotry, hate, and demagoguery. It has poisoned political debate, exploited the abandonment of the 'Fairness Doctrine' which previously guaranteed access to opposing views.

Limbaugh has made similar remarks before. Speaking of the Honduran coup Rush had this to say: "The coup was what many of you wish would happen here, without the military"; and, "If we had any good luck, Honduras would send some people here and help us get our government back".

Recently Newsmax columnist John L. Perry was disgraced and humiliated after making a similar suggestion. Newsmax immediately removed the column and distanced their publication from any affiliation with Perry.

Unfair and unbalanced, both Fox and Limbaugh have exploited positions of privilege. The fact is: media access is denied every one but the very, very, very rich and the very, very, very privileged. This will only change when an indictment for treason makes the point very clear to the right wing: with freedom of speech comes responsibility and there is, in fact, no freedom of speech in a nation that has denied that right to everyone but an increasingly tiny elite that is rich enough to own Clear Channel or FOX! Freedom of speech in America? Sure --but only if you happen to be rich!

Patricia Mangan
When is everyone going to say Enough is Enough?
Yesterday at 10:57pm · Delete

Patricia Mangan
He is sickening!
Yesterday at 10:58pm · Delete

David Richland
This prick needs to be thrown in jail. The fact that he walks free after spouting this treason is not just offensive - it hurts the credibility of the government. If someone had said this during the Bush administration they would have gone right to jail, no questions asked... and Bush would have been within his rights to incarcerate them. This kind of talk is just going to escalate until all traitors are held accountable.
Yesterday at 11:56pm · Delete

Ronald E Carson
What David said!!
12 hours ago · Delete

Madison Bradshaw
Rush never fails to amaze me. He constantly raises the bar for stupidity and also is truly an enemy of our country when he starts spouting out a call for a military coup. Absolutely, ditto what David said. NO ONE could get away with that if spoken during the Bush years even though he truly became guilty - and while in office - of committing ... See Morecrimes against humanity. Will we ever see justice done to Bush and his followers who are the cause of so many deaths - for a LIE! Then there's the issue about practically destroying our country economically, the list goes on. And the right - full of certified crazy ideas - get away with vocalizing this kind of spin. Joke? He may make it seem like he's joking - we know it's a subliminal message to agitate people in the hope of his sick ramblings becoming a reality.
11 hours ago · Delete

Billy Regan
I second time to prosecute Limbaugh. Put the sorry B
in jail and throw the key away. He needs to grab his
ears & snatch his head out of his A. How can who ever
he works for keep supporting him?
11 hours ago · Delete

Patricia Mangan
They all try to out do themselves by their stupidity and their hate!
7 hours ago

Thursday, November 26, 2009

The US used to boast the highest standard of living in the world. Those days are long past. Today --the US is among the most inequitable nations on earth where also is found those nations enduring the very worst standards of living. The US --once number one --is not even in the top ten.

According the ranking, the country with the best living conditions is the Scandinavian country of Norway. Helped by a relatively small population of only five million people, combined with an abundance of energy resources such as oil and natural gas, the people of Norway also live in one of the most democratic countries in the world. Further contributing to Norway holding the top ranking in the report has been the ability of the socialist government to continue to provide the generous social benefits the government provides due in large part from its massive sovereign wealth fund, which is the second largest in the world at approximately 330 billion dollars.

About the current crisis begun in the Bush years --some have said that the stiumli were/are 'too small'. The real problem is that the wrong people got the 'stimuli'. Those getting stimuli were the very banksters who created this mess to begin with! Much of the 'stimuli' wound up in offshore tax havens where may be found much US 'wealth'! Much (if not all) of the 'stimuli' never stimulated anything but the greed. Is there any evidence that the 'stimuli' created a single job? Were any industries in any way 'stimulated'? Were any 'stimuli' given those who might have used the money to get out of poverty, buy a home or get an education?

'Trickle down' stimuli did not work because 'trickle down theory' is bullshit!

Wealth nor 'stimuli' trickle down! Wealth did not trickle down for Ronald Reagan, whose tax cuts began the current trend, and wealth has not trickled-down nor stimulated a recovery. Alas! Nothing is learned from the lessons of history. The lesson to be learned from the Ronald Reagan debacle, the sad effects of which we still live with, is that 'stimuli' are mere windfalls for elites and, in fact, began the trend in which the wealthy got richer and the those just getting by fell off the bottom rung.

Now --this is not a hit job on Obama. The current situation is the result of trends begun with the ascension of Ronald Reagan to the White House. It was Reagan's tax cut, benefiting only the upper quintile, which resulted in the long term trend in which just one percent of the total US population now owns more than some 95 percent of the rest of us combined. Only coincidence theorists believe that it is only coincidental that those nation's having the highest living standards are, likewise, those nations boasting the more egalitarian societies.

But nothing will change in America, however, until attitudes are changed. Tragically, attitudes change slowly. A significant change may require a major depression, perhaps a generation or two before the reality of it all seeps in.

Wingnuttery gets more absurd with each passing day. The wingnut la-la land has come un-glued and completely out of touch with reality. Found on Facebook a poignant reminder of the state of the economy, fact apparently lost on wingnuts!

Here's where I get my stamina and keep my sanity to:

- Apply for 30 jobs a week for 12 weeks and never hear back

- Spend 3 hours weekly with the bank to keep my home

after 4 months and 4 mortgage applications, send in the 5th mortgage application for the 5th month.

--Anonymous, Found on Facebook

Now --the right wing has derided Barack Obama's plan to put millions to work in a new industry --green energy! The right wing is in no position to deride anyone. This is the US right wing that put millions out of work with idiotic tax cuts and other windfalls for Wall Street banksters, buddies, cronies, stall buddies and privileged elites. To these idiots and elites, I have an appropriate epithet that begins with the letter 'F' and ends with 'you'!

Realistically, 'green energy' has a future. A world without it doesn't! It is a better, a brighter future than, say, a lifetime career in government run pits in which are dug out dollar bills made worthless by GOP 'sellouts' to China and Japan. What if the plan should put millions back to work and re-stimulated the economy?

What if it should fail? So what! We'll be no worse off! We we would be no worse off if it failed to create a single job! We will be considerably better off if it should put a million or more back to work! And infinitely better off if, by exploiting this new resource, America should find its better self again, a new industry, a future for millions now without hope!

It is not surprising that the geniuses of the utterly failed 'right wing' have the derided the idea. Keep in mind that these are the same folk that think 'privatization' of Social Security, letting the big banks who have brought us to the brink of utter economic collapse, administrate your retirement is a brilliant idea!

IDIOTS!!

These are the idiots who lambaste an Obama plan to create millions of productive jobs in green industries! I say Obama's plan is infinitely superior to the idiots' plan to turn over the only government program to have ever run a surplus to robber barons, speculators and fast buck artists on Wall Street!

The US economy collapsed because it contracted. It contracted because it produces very little that the rest of the world wants to buy. Check The CIA's World Fact Book for proof of this. The US is at the bottom of the list with the World's largest trade deficit, now called the Negative Current Account Balance. China, which props up the dollar as per agreements with the Bush crime family, is on top of the CIA's list with the world's largest positive Current Account Balance.

There was never a real opposition, i.e, a 'left wing' in America. The US system is just two wings of one party and there was, therefore, no restraint, no balance, no moderating influence as a result of 'compromise'.

$ 150 billion spent on windmills, solar panels and 'energy efficiency' is a drop in the bucket compared to the trillions squandered and lost forever as a result of the overt criminality of the big banks in cahoots with the Fed. That's money lost forever, a contraction of the economy that caused the current depression! Obama's plan will create some 5 million jobs and promote economic growth. Obama could not do worse and, most certainly, will do better than a plan first proposed by John Maynard Keynes.

. . . fill old bottles with banknotes, bury them at suitable depths in disused coal mines which are then filled up to the surface with town rubbish, and leave it to private enterprise on well-tried principles of laissez-faire to dig the notes up again (the right to do so being obtained, of course, by tendering for leases of the note-bearing territory), there need be no more unemployment and, with the help of the repercussions, the real income of the community, and its capital wealth also, would probably become a good deal greater than it actually is [italics added]. It would, indeed, be more sensible to build houses and the like; but if there are political and practical difficulties in the way of this, the above would be better than nothing.

--John Maynard Keynes, The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money, Macmillan, St Martin’s Press for the Royal Economic Society, 1973, p. 129).

It's time the US went back to work after having been told by the Reagan/Bush regimes that the US could survive by exporting its 'expertise'! Uh huh! Expertise in what?? The US is now paying the price for having abandoned its industries, having sold out to China, having stabbed labor in the back! The US never had a viable 'labor movement' that, in Poland, resulted in the fall of the communist regime. In America, by contrast, labor was derided as 'communist' and, under Ronald Reagan, made 'irrelevant'. Reagan cannot be 'credited' with having single handedly neutered the movement. The many professional murders by Pinkerton's, the Jihad waged by Gen. Harrison Grey Otis (Los Angeles), the hundreds, perhaps thousands, of lesser known atrocities paved the way.

Having marginalized dissent, Reagan tax cuts enriched only the upper quintile, the nation's richest twenty percent. The trend was clearly visible in charts prepared by the Brookings Institution, BEA, the Bureau of Labor Statistics et al. Just as clearly was the brief reversal in Bill Clinton's second term. Alas, all 'gains' were lost under Bush Jr. Today --just one percent of the US population owns more than some 95 percent of the rest of us combined. The time has come to take another look at Keynes. Obama's plan is, at least, a start.

In the 1920s Keynes visited Russia, where he was able to meet some of his wife's impoverished relatives. Unlike his friends Beatrice and Sidney Webb, or the dramatist George Bernard Shaw, Keynes wasn't impressed by Stalin's Russia. "How can I accept a doctrine," he asked, "which sets up as its bible, above and beyond criticism, an obsolete economic textbook which I know to be not only scientifically erroneous but without interest or application for the modern world?" But Keynes was barely more enthusiastic about capitalism as it was practised in the contemporary world. "Such a system," he wrote, "has to be immensely, not just moderately successful to survive." The Great Slump made it clear that capitalism was neither.

The current 'crisis' was a long time in making. Compounding the problem are several factors; 1) the 'elite' one percent are joined at the hip to the Military/Industrial complex. Like Rome, the US makes its 'living' killing people in those foreign nations rich in the resources needed by the US, 2) under Ronald Reagan, the US had begun an 'export' of jobs, most notably Japan and China; 3) education is neglected in America, the best example being Texas where the percentage graduating high school slipped to last in the nation --the result of back to back incompetent regimes: Bush and Perry. Texas now beats out Mississippi for dead last in education. Concurrently, the state's prison population is burgeoning, enriching the corporations to whom was awarded the contracts in which they house the thousands (millions nationwide) for whom the only career left them is crime.

In the meantime, there is secessionist talk and not just among rednecks, death row inmates in Texas, or tea bagging imbeciles down south.

CHATTANOOGA, Tenn. (AP) — In an unlikely marriage of desire to secede from the United States, two advocacy groups from opposite political traditions — New England and the South — are sitting down to talk.

Tired of foreign wars and what they consider right-wing courts, the Middlebury Institute wants liberal states like Vermont to be able to secede peacefully.

That sounds just fine to the League of the South, a conservative group that refuses to give up on Southern independence.

"We believe that an independent South, or Hawaii, Alaska, or Vermont would be better able to serve the interest of everybody, regardless of race or ethnicity," said Michael Hill of Killen, Ala., president of the League of the South.

Separated by hundreds of miles and divergent political philosophies, the Middlebury Institute and the League of the South are hosting a two-day Secessionist Convention starting Wednesday in Chattanooga.

I submit that the Southern Secessionists are still nuts! The economy of the south is in no better shape that it was when it was based almost entirely upon slave labor. What does the South export now except bigots, bullshit and tours of Plantation homes where the great grandfathers of bigots convinced themselves that they were 'aristocrats'! As the Rude Pundit put it so eloquently --fuck the South!

Why I moderate comments

SPAM: 'comments' that link to junk, 'get rich' schemes, scams, and nonsense! These are the worst offenders.

Ad hominem attacks: 'name calling' and 'labeling'. That includes the ad hominem: 'truther' or variations!

Monday, November 23, 2009

Albert Einstein said: "the men who possess real power in this country have no intention of ending the cold war." It is one of the most incredible 'coincidences' in history that as the Berlin Wall fell and communism ceased to be the global threat we had been told it was, a new 'bogey man' would arise, as if on cue, to take its place. World terrorism', like a good steward, is now on the job, keeping the crooks on K-street and the Pentagon in firm control of one of the largest, most dangerous empires since Rome.

Like the U.S. today, the Roman economy was 'militarized', the empire over-extended, the battles fought by mercenaries. The currency might get you into the Coliseum for the 'games' but little else. Thus --bread and circuses were popular. When the Praetorian Guard auctioned the Roman Empire to Didius Julianus the sale was completed in Greek Drachmas --not worthless Roman Sesterces.

Some two decades ago, it was decided by the global financial elites that the framework for the global economy shall consist of:

1) A global derivative-based financial system, controlled by the US Federal Reserve Bank and its associate global banks in the developed countries.

2) The re-location from the West to the East in the production of goods, principally to China and India to “feed” the developed economies.

The entire system was built on a simple principle, that of a FED-controlled global reserve currency which will be the engine for growth for the global economy. It is essentially an imperialist economic principle.

Once we grasp this fundamental truth, Bernanke’s boast that the “US can produce as many US dollars as it wishes at no cost” takes on a different dimension.

I have talked to so many economists and when asked what is the crux of the present financial problem, they all respond in unison, “it is the global imbalances… the West consumes too much while the East saves too much and consumes not enough”. This is exemplified by the huge US trade deficits on the one part and China’s massive surpluses on the other.

The U. S. is routinely pimped on K-Street and, like Rome's sesterces and denarius, the dollar is all but worthless; China boasts the Worlds largest POSITIVE current account balance; the US the largest trade deficit. China props up the US dollar but only because it has to. This Faustian bargain was first cut by Bush Sr who paved the way for Nixon's famous trip to China's Forbidden City.

In December 2008 Lawrence Summers, soon to become the administration’s highest-ranking economist, called for decisive action. “Many experts,” he warned, “believe that unemployment could reach 10 percent by the end of next year.” In the face of that prospect, he continued, “doing too little poses a greater threat than doing too much.”

Ten months later unemployment reached 10.2 percent, suggesting that despite his warning the administration hadn’t done enough to create jobs. You might have expected, then, a determination to do more.

Some have said that the stiumli were not enough, in other words, 'too small'. It was not that the stimuli were too small but that those getting the stimuli were the banksters who had created this mess to begin with. Alas --nothing is learned from the lessons of history.

Most economists agree: the West consumes too much and the East, primarily China does not consume enough. Compounding the problem --China props up the dollar but only because it had to dump cheap product upon the American market via Wal-Mart, it's retail 'arm' in the U.S.

Rome

The Rise and Fall of an Empire

Why I moderate comments

SPAM: 'comments' that link to junk, 'get rich' schemes, scams, and nonsense! These are the worst offenders.

Ad hominem attacks: 'name calling' and 'labeling'. That includes the ad hominem: 'truther' or variations!